The minister asked the principals of these institutes in Ganjam district to work hard to make their students employable by sending students to the central placement cell at Bhubaneswar and to conduct campus recruitment drives by inviting reputed companies from across the country.

The government aims to provide skilled training to around 11 lakh youths graduating from professional institutes over the next five years from 2014-15 under the Chief Minister Employment Generation Scheme (CMEGS) to get them jobs in various industries, he said.

Dasburma, along with higher education minister Pradeep Kumar Panigrahi, reviewed the functioning of government ITIs, engineering schools and polytechnics in the district yesterday after laying the foundation stone for a new academic building for ITI, Berhampur, skill development centre and inaugurating a 108-seat boys' hostel in UCP Engineering School here.

Dasburma said the government had sanctioned about Rs 3.62 crore for the new academic block of the ITI and Rs 1.75 crore for the skill development centre. Around Rs 2 crore was spent for the establishment of a 108-seat boys' hostel in the engineering school.

He said a high-level meeting would be held in Bhubaneswar soon involving all departments concerned to sort out infrastructure problems of the technical institutes.

Odisha State Employment Mission (OSEM) director and Directorate of Technical Education and Training (DTET) Pramod Kumar Panda said the government would set up 30 more ITIs across the state. Five of them would be located in Maoist-hit districts, and seven in the tribal and backward districts. Around Rs 5.63 crore would be spent on each ITI.

Stating that funds were not a problem for infrastructure development of the professional institutes, he said the government has provided Rs 20 crore for development of the ITIs, and Rs 50 crore for the engineering schools in the budget.